They had made Felix a place at the microphone.
His name was written on a card clipped to the stand. Beneath it someone had added FRIEND OF THE BRIDE, in smaller letters, as though a person might need instructions for that too. Cal took the card off before Juno came around with her camera. The words would look terrible floating beside anyone's face.
The welcome drinks were being served inside. A line of small lights made the ballroom windows disappear against the dusk, and beyond the glass the garden was still bright enough to see people crossing it. One corridor door remained shut. Staff kept reaching it, remembering, turning around with whatever they carried.
“Where's my speaker?” the planner asked.
“Which one?”
“Felix. I can't get an answer.”
Cal put the name card on the little table holding spare microphones. “Start with Gideon.”
“He's after him.”
“He can go before him.”
She looked down at her list, struck out something, then pressed a finger to her earpiece. Cal went to the far side of the room.
Adrian stood beside the bar with his sister, trying to make her take something out of his hand. A glass of water. Pam finally took it and drank, without appearing to notice what he had been asking. He looked absurdly pleased.
Cal positioned himself beyond Gideon, where he could keep Adrian's face in view when the case opened. Juno found him, followed his glance, and went low at the other side for the object. They had discussed it while checking the sound. They didn't have to discuss it now.
Gideon wanted the room quiet. He waited until the bartender stopped shaking something, then kept waiting while a guest finished a sentence in a voice that grew louder as everyone else fell silent.
“I won't keep you,” he said at last.
He kept them long enough to tell a story about Adrian taking the wrong bag from a hotel luggage room. Cal followed a small change in Adrian's expression as he recognized it. The man was already shaking his head, trying to stop the story with a finger at his lips.
Gideon told it anyway. The bag contained a child's plastic mermaid tail, a saucepan, and something he described only as private. Adrian had carried it into a meeting with six investors. He was still denying that the mermaid tail was his when the little leather case appeared in Gideon's hand.
Cal tightened the frame.
“Your sister found this,” Gideon said. “She asked me to find somebody less useless than the people she'd been asking.”
Adrian looked toward Pam. She stared at the floor.
The watch lay in the open case, small and old against the new lining. Adrian did not reach for it. His mouth stayed open a little. Cal could hear the motor in the bartender's refrigerator and somebody's loose bracelet clicking against a glass.
Then Adrian went to his sister.
It was the wrong direction for the planned picture. Cal swung with him, stepping behind a chair before a guest could stand and block him. Pam was holding the glass of water out to nobody. Adrian took her by both shoulders and kissed her forehead. She put the water down, missed the table, caught it with her other hand, and began to cry angrily.
“Oh, don't,” she said.
Juno had moved too. Cal could see the little leather case in Gideon's hand at the edge of her frame, still open, waiting to be useful again.
Lena came forward and took the case from him. She held it for Adrian while he dealt with Pam. She didn't look impatient. Cal kept her in the wider picture until Adrian turned, saw what she'd done, and put his hand over hers.
For a moment he forgot to be afraid of her.
The applause made it look like an ending. People lifted their drinks. Gideon thanked the room, then bent toward Cal as he passed.
“All of that.”
“You'll get it.”
Gideon touched his own large watch to straighten it under his cuff and walked toward the bar. The old watch had gone with Adrian. Juno came up beside Cal, still recording the couple.
“Did you get her nearly dropping it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The planner was standing by the door with a hotel manager. He spoke close to her ear. She lowered her clipboard, and Cal saw her eyes go toward Lena.
He stopped recording.
At the bar, a man called out Felix's name. Not urgently, not yet. Someone said he was probably smoking. Another guest said he didn't smoke. The conversation broke into smaller pieces.
The manager came to Adrian first. He held one hand out, low, asking him to step away. Lena followed them before anyone asked her to.
Juno's camera was down now too.
“Is that the man from the court?” she asked.
Cal didn't answer quickly enough.
“What?” she said.
“I don't know.”
Across the room, Adrian put his hand against the wall. The manager moved closer as if he thought the man might fall. Lena stood with her back to Cal. She turned her head just enough to see where he was.
Then the planner came over.
“Can you both come off the floor for a minute?”
“What happened?” Juno asked.
“It's Felix. He's died.”
Juno looked across at the couple. Her fingers tightened around the grip of B.
“The man this afternoon?”
The planner nodded. Her face had gone blotchy, and she kept swallowing. “There's somebody who needs to speak to you. About where you were. They're speaking to people.”
Cal took the camera strap off his neck. It caught on his collar button. Juno lifted the strap over it for him, a little impatient tug that freed him.
They followed the planner through a door he hadn't filmed. In the short passage behind it a waiter stood beside a tray of tiny red desserts, not sure whether he should go out. Cal had a strong desire to take one. It passed when he saw the woman at the far end of the passage watching him.
She introduced herself as Detective Quinn. No badge held up for the camera, no instruction about recording; his camera hung quiet at his side. She asked which of them was Cal Mercer, then asked Juno to wait with a uniformed officer near the lobby.
“We can talk in here,” she said.
It was a room where guests could leave coats they wouldn't need in Miami. She opened the door wider with her foot and moved a rail out of the way. Cal waited until she pointed to a chair. He disliked himself for waiting.
“You work for the wedding?”
“Mercer Films. I'm the owner.”
“How long have you been here today?”
He gave her the morning, the setup, the portrait interview. She wrote little, looking up while he talked. He found himself filling the spaces she left.
“You were in a service stairwell around lunchtime.”
“I was looking for a location.”
“Who sent you there?”
“No one. The banquet captain gave me directions.”
“Where did you go?”
Cal described the recess, the upper door, the patch of shade. He left out Lena and Felix. The rest came easily because it was true.
Quinn asked him what he could see from there. He described the rail, some planting, the side of the building. He could hear the ballroom through the wall: a swell of voices, then a clatter of glasses. People were still being given drinks.
“Did you see anyone on the other terrace?”
“I didn't use it. The sound was bad.”
She waited.
“Did you see anyone there?”
“No.”
“Or hear anything unusual?”
“There were air-conditioning units.”
“Did you see anyone fall?”
Cal looked at her pen, resting across two fingers. He had watched his own thumb above the call screen. He had walked past Emilio. All of it was still waiting to be said.
“No.”
Quinn made a note.
“Did you know Mr. Rusk?”
“I met him here.”
“Did you speak?”
“For a few minutes. About a photograph.”
She asked which photograph. He told her. Asked what else they'd discussed, he said Felix's father had liked good hotels. It was easier than the shoes, easier than admitting the dead man had offered him something warm to eat.
“Did you see him with anyone?”
Cal felt the collar tighten against his neck.
“The bride. In the hall. Before I went outside.”
“What were they doing?”
“Talking.”
“Did you hear them?”
He could hide everything or choose a piece to make the rest look like a man doing his best. He told her they seemed to be discussing work. Partners, maybe. A distribution. He said he hadn't stayed for it.
Quinn asked him to repeat the word. He did.
“Were you filming outside?”
“Some location checks.”
“Keep that material. I'd like to see what you have from that side of the building, and anything of Mr. Rusk.”
“Of course.”
“Who handles the files?”
“My assistant. And me.”
She took both names and numbers. She gave him a contact and asked him to send the relevant material when they were back at the laptop. He repeated her request too readily, making it into a little job she had assigned him. She watched him while he put the number into his phone.
“Is there anything else you remember?”
He could still tell her. He could tell her he'd lied a minute ago, that he'd been frightened. There would be the money. There would be all the things after the money. Quinn sat close enough for him to see a small white hair caught on her jacket sleeve.
“No,” he said.
She got up and opened the door. Juno was not outside. A uniformed officer took Cal toward the lobby and asked him to wait while someone found her.
He waited beneath the red painting. The hotel shop was closing its glass doors. He could see the woman who had sold him the shirt putting something in a drawer.
Lena came out of a meeting room with Adrian. He had loosened his belt. The small leather watch case was still in one hand. A hotel employee offered to take it for him, and he shook his head.
He saw Cal and came over.
“You met him today, didn't you?”
“A little.”
“He was going to speak. I told Lena we should get him up early, before everybody was drunk.”
He looked back toward her. She stood beside the meeting-room door, waiting.
“Are we meant to stop?” Adrian asked.
Cal thought he meant filming. “If you'd like.”
“No. All of it.” He turned the little case in his hand. “Lena says the people are already here. You can't send them back to their rooms with this and nothing else.”
Cal had no answer.
Adrian looked at the camera. “I don't want you filming people hearing. That part. We don't need that.”
“We won't.”
“But don't go. I want the rest.”
Cal nodded.
Juno emerged from the corridor, walking fast. She passed Adrian with a short apology and came straight to Cal.
“They need the outside material,” she said. “She gave you her number?”
“Yes.”
“I'll get the drives.”
“I'll do that. Get the room first. Nobody wants you pointing a camera at them right now.”
She looked at him, then at Adrian, who was going back to Lena with the case pressed flat against his thigh.
“The room?”
“Before they move everything. Get what it looks like.”
“Cal, there are people—”
“Then keep them out of it.”
He went upstairs before she could ask which files he intended to send.